


We Have A Deal

by Nygmatech



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Heavy Drinking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Once Again I Have No Idea How To Tag This, Self Indulgent Comfort Fic I Guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29323773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nygmatech/pseuds/Nygmatech
Summary: Harvey Dent has done many things to keep his mind clear from frequent interjections, but getting black-out drunk proved to be a worse idea than expected.Can Big Bad Harv manage to look past mutual resentment and get through to Harvey in an unexpected time of need?Can the two Dents take their first steps towards working together instead of against each other?Can AO3 user Nygmatech write a fic summary that doesn't read like a golden age introductory panel right now?Find out in the thrilling new Two-Face adventure: “We Have A Deal.”(I'm not writing a better description.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	We Have A Deal

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? MORE weird Harvey fic? It's my favorite flavor! As with the other one, there isn't any romance here, but if you like weird dream conversations and idk, healing, then this is the fic for you! Deep lore, the Actual document title of this in my google drive is "Harvey Don't (Extended Director's Cut)"
> 
> **Disclaimer: I'm not a singlet, and this stuff is all thinly veiled vent fic/comfort fic bc OSDD is a wild ride. A lot of this is written from my own experiences and weird feelings.**
> 
> I use Two-Face to refer to them as a system, and differentiate between the two using the names Harvey and Harv. Bolded dialogue is Harv, bc he would likely have it no other way. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It was a lively night at the Spare Nickel. 

The tiny hole in the wall was jam-packed with a rowdy group of criminals and lowlives, finally letting loose after a successful takedown of a rival’s front. The bartender was laughing jovially, just enough to cover the stress of slinging shots of well swill and pints of cheap beer to the line that stretched down the bar and never seemed to shorten. A crowd of guys huddled around a pair of arm wrestlers, taking bets on who would win this time around; the score looked to be an even tie.

The ringleader of the operation sat alone at a dimly lit table in the far corner. A few drinks in and almost disconnected from the noise by now, he took one metered sip from a gin and tonic, followed almost immediately by another, more drawn-out quaff from a rusty nail. The smokiness traveling up through the back of his mouth into his nostrils, a grin crossed the man’s mangled lips as he sat back and observed.

 **“Fine job we did, eh?”** he growled in satisfaction, folding his arms and taking in the celebration around him.

His grin was slowly replaced with a firm expression, a new thought interrupting his last from the corner of his mind. _“You should have left it to the GCPD. You know they were on Falcone’s tail.”_

A blemished brow furrowed as the man once again prepared for another bout of this seemingly-endless cognitive altercation. **_“Yeah, and they were taking their sweet, sweet time, too. What next, you wait for Falcone’s boys to get bold? Take us on? Cause us more problems? Pre-emptive justice. Can’t trust the cops to get ‘em in time.”_ **

_“And use Falcone’s assets to perpetuate the same crimes he was committing?”_

**_“It’s either that or let ‘em walk all over us. Think about it, Harvey. We’re a big fish in a little pond. Can’t expect the law to scrub this scum out of Gotham.”_ **

The man scowled, prematurely ending his mental sparring by picking up the gin and tonic and drinking it in one go. “You know what? I’m done arguing with you,” he muttered out loud. Grabbing the other glass, he did the same, ignoring the pungency of the peaty scotch while hoping this second dose would drown _him_ out for the rest of the night. He squinted, focusing on the burning sensation that slid down his throat, smoldering in the pit of his stomach.

It wasn’t enough. 

_“I need another drink.”_

**_“No the hell you don’t. You just chugged mine.”_ **

_“Toss for it.”_

**_“I can’t stand you when you’re drunk.”_ **

_“You can’t seem to tolerate me to begin with. Toss for it.”_

**_“Fine. Fuck it. Whatever. Fair is fair.”_ **

He flicked the coin into the air, the ol’ trusty decision-maker landing clean-side up. Too bad this time it didn’t signify a good outcome. Harvey snorted, triumphantly placing the coin back in his pocket with a tight-lipped smirk. 

_“You said it yourself, fair is fair.”_

Harvey had no idea just how intoxicated he was at this point until he stood up. His skull felt like it was filled with lead, and every sound in the bar seemed to blur together even more than it already had. As steadily as he could, he meandered to the bar and requested another drink - _something, anything that’ll make him shut up._ The bartender raised an eyebrow and shrugged, wordlessly preparing a concoction that smelled like floor cleaner and tasted like an unfortunate courtroom assault.

Though many knew Harv as the more rash and impulsive Dent, he was far more careful with their shared body than Harvey ever was these days. When it came to self-destruction, the former DA had become a master at recommending harsh sentences. Harv could only sit back and watch as Harvey shakily took the glass in hand and downed the contents inside. Retching a little, he slowly slid a haphazard pile of two-dollar bills towards the bartender with a weary but polite “thank you,” before shakily making his way back to the corner table.

Sinking back down into the chair, he buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably. A few of the henchmen turned their heads at the sight of their distraught employer, but he didn’t notice. He couldn’t. Harvey had no idea what brought this feeling upon himself, or why he started crying so suddenly, or why he didn't have the self-control to just stop as he usually could. He could almost physically hear Harv shouting at him, but he couldn’t comprehend a single bellowed word from his enraged headmate. Eventually, that and his own outward cries became one with the background noise.

 _This was a mistake_ , he thought, _or was it?_ Staring at his palms, he could hardly recognize them as his own. He felt like a stranger in his own body, watching himself sob from the emotional lens of an outside observer. He could physically feel the weight of despair grow in his core, but he was completely divorced from any potential cause. The lines where Harvey ended and Harv began, which usually felt so clean-cut, were now tangled and indeterminate. There was no longer any argument, but no clarity either. Noticing the world around him grow fuzzier, his eyelids became heavier by the second as his exhausted body won the fight. Two-Face was soon passed out cold on the sticky lacquered oak of the table, scarred-side up.

\---

Dent opened his eyes, coming to his senses not in the bar, but in a courtroom. He was definitely Harv, no more of _that_ messy confusion remained at the very least, though residual rage still simmered.

Getting his bearings, he stood up. After everything that had happened, Harv had resigned himself to waiting in their mind to confront Harvey once things settled, but here he was, awake in a sleeping body, and Harvey was nowhere to be found. 

It was rare to be alone in the courtroom, a space typically delegated by their mind as a place of arbitration between the two. Many important discussions have been had here, but this time, the damn place was silent. Harv’s footsteps echoed almost mockingly off the checkered marble floor and into the high ceilings. Neither a word nor a sound from his other half could be detected. His pulse began to race.

 **“Harvey!”** he called.

No answer.

**“HARVEY!!!”**

**“Where the FUCK are you?”**

**“Show your pretty little face, you piece of shit!”**

**“If you don’t stop hiding RIGHT NOW, you son of a bitch, I’ll…”**

**“Harvey?!?”**

**“Harvey…?”**

Something was wrong. Something was _very wrong._ Why the hell did he care? Frantically looking around, he scanned the courtroom for his counterpart. Harvey wasn’t hiding in here, his guilty conscience would have driven him to reveal himself by that point. Taking a deep breath, Harv walked out of the courtroom and down one of the hallways attached to it - he couldn’t just escape his own head.

He wandered aimlessly, carpet and walls seeming to change ever so slightly with each turn. The doors, too, were all different, though he paid little heed to them as he walked past. Eventually, he could hear it: a muffled sobbing in the distance. It sounded like Harvey.

With a relieved sigh - one he was glad Harvey wasn’t there to witness - he followed the sound. The lighting in each hallway grew dim as he travelled deeper into the recesses of the seemingly endless series of corridors and turns. Despite this, Harv didn’t feel lost; he had been here many times in the past, often of his own volition. Finding Harvey here was a different story, as these were places the man rarely dared to tread.

Finally locating the source of the crying, Harvey stopped mid-step. He took in the sight of the door in front of him, noting every last detail. It was one he knew well: a wooden door, painted white with a brass handle. It was almost pristine, but Harv knew it wasn’t. The lock was busted, and had been for as long as he could remember. Without hesitating further, he reached for the handle and slowly opened it up.

It was nighttime in their old bedroom. The stars were shining brilliantly in the sky, and a cool summer breeze was making its way in through a cracked window. Their small bed was perfectly made, with a blue and white comforter neatly set atop the tiny twin mattress. Model cars and baseball trophies lined the shelves, and a junior debate club plaque, their then most prized possession, was mounted proudly over the dresser drawer.

If you asked anyone, the child who lived in this room was leading a wonderful life. That statement _was_ true half of the time, at least. Harv had never admitted it, but he always wished he could have experienced the better parts of their shared childhood a little more fully.

Harvey was huddled with his eyes shut, back facing the corner of the room. His arms were wrapped around his knees, and yet he still appeared far too large for the space he was in. He had no idea that Harv was in there with him, rocking back and forth as tears continued to fall.

Approaching as carefully as he could so not to startle his other self, Harv whispered his name.

**“Harvey?”**

“Go away.”

**“Harvey, I…”**

“I said _go away_. How many times do I have to tell you this?” His voice was quivering. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Harv let out a long puff of air from his nostrils. Climbing up onto the old bed, he sat as patiently as he could manage, idly kicking his legs while he waited for Harvey to finally come around. Eventually, Harvey spoke again.

“What the hell am I feeling, Harv? What did you do to me this time?”

 **“What did** **_I_ ** **do? You knocked down three drinks in two minutes. You know we** **_share_ ** **this body, dumbass!”**

“Yes, I did. I wanted you to _shut up_ for once in my goddamn life.” He clenched his fist. “It was working, you went away! But then I. But then we. I didn’t know who I was, and...”

**“We got scrambled.”**

Harvey lifted his head, glaring pointedly at Harv. “What the HELL did you do to me?” he asks again, eyes bloodshot and puffy. “I feel...I feel...I can’t describe how I feel. It’s painful! I woke up _here_ and it still hurts!” His voice dropped to a defeated whisper. “I’m so confused.”

Harv grimaced. Something must have been shared that shouldn’t have. Perhaps it was the smell of the alcohol, the noise, a broken glass or the sound of his own damn voice; _something_ dragged up one of Harv’s memories, and it ended up in Harvey’s hands instead. There was no way he could have ever been prepared for this.

Harv hopped off the bed and crouched beside Harvey. The man was still shaking, every muscle tense as he drew himself further inward. “Why am I so _angry?”_ he growled through clenched teeth. Even in his rage, his tone was so much more restrained than Harv’s ever could be.

Harv put a hand on the man’s shoulder. It’d be hypocritical to berate him for this, as much as his first instinct told him to rip his ‘weaker self’ a new one. After all, he was often on the other end of this very scenario for the very same reason. With a metered pause, he gathered his thoughts.

 **“You know what our father did to us, right?”** Harv questioned, attempting to keep an even tone.

“Yeah. I know what happened, I just don’t remember much of it.”

**“Do you want to know why you can’t remember?”**

“Repressed memories. Dissociation. Amnesia. It’s a defense mechanism. My therapist described it all to me when I finally got the damn diagnosis.”

 **“You never thought about where all those fun little memories ended up, huh?”** He snorted. **“Figured as much. You’ve always been a bit obtuse.”**

“I always thought they were locked up in some...some inaccessible void somewhere. You think I ever wanted to touch them? I had my future to worry about, I wasn’t ready to relive it all.”

 **“It’s clear to me that you’re still not,”** Harv stated, voice low, but not inflammatory. **“You know this pain you’re feeling? This pain you have no idea how to describe? For years, decades, I’ve been holding onto it. Feeling every second of it. Our brain created me to defend you, and I did, at least until you stuffed me away for years to** **_rot._ ** **”**

“What you’re trying to tell me is everything I thought was gone, you’ve been feeling this whole time?”

**“Yeah.”**

“What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?”

 **“At first, I wanted to protect you,”** Harv explained, folding his arms across his chest. **“I tried many times later to tell you, but you never listened. Always shut me out at every corner. Told me to go away, told me to never speak to you again.”**

“You kept threatening me. Threatening my career! What the hell was I supposed to do? Let you take over and lose control?”

**“You could have just let me breathe!”**

“You wanted to hurt people!”

 **“Yeah, the people who** **_hurt us_ ** **.”** Lifting his scarred hand, Harv rubbed at his temple. **“If you would have listened to me earlier, this could have been avoided.”**

Harvey frowned, narrowing his eyes further. “Remember that time you sent that kid to the hospital?”

 **“He had** **_appendicitis_ ** **.”**

“You still broke his nose!”

 **“It was justice.** **_He deserved it,”_ ** Harv barked. **_“_ ** **You always ask why I ‘hate’ you so much? It’s because I spent our whole childhood protecting you from shitstains like him and our father, only to be locked up in a little box and ignored. It was like I was a disease to you.”**

“You are! You are literally a symptom.”

 **“No more than you are. You think you don’t cause** ** _me_** **any issues? You were just the spineless, sad little man behind the wheel for all those years."** A tense exhalation exited through his grit teeth. **"I know I’m a monster in your eyes, Harvey. I was born from misery and festered for years in a cesspool of anger and loathing, after all. To you, I may as well be a putrid, rotten, evil bastard that only exists to do horrible things and make your life hell, but guess what?”**

“What?”

 **“Despite all of this? Despite what you think I am, you have hated me far more than I could ever bring myself to hate you. Heads or tails, it’s** **_still_ ** **my job to protect you.”**

“Then why did you keep terrorizing me? Did you want me to feel all that pain again? To despise our father the same way you do? You and I both know it’s more complicated than that. _What did you want from me for so long?_ ”

Harv took a breath, desperately trying for one goddamn second to not just spit out whatever defensive bullshit he was feeling in the moment. Vulnerability was a choice, after all, but there were no coins to be flipped here. **“I wanted you to understand...”** Glancing to the side, he grimaced as he forced the words out of his throat. **“What we survived together. What we could survive together.”**

Harvey couldn’t formulate a response.

 **“Wait a second,”** Harv began again, standing up and walking towards a cork board in the bedroom. It was still there, the drawing young Harvey did for show and tell. He recalled that poor Harvey was laughed at for bringing his ‘imaginary friend’ into school. Harv wanted to knock the teeth out of each and every single mocking grin, but he didn’t want to ruin Harvey’s day any further. Carefully unpinning the sheet of lined paper, he took it back over to Harvey and placed it in his hands. **“Remember this?”**

Harvey peered down at the page, featuring a rudimentary sketch in blue crayon of a smiling, confident boy with his hands on his hips. The name above his head? Big Bad Harv.

“Damn. We _were_ best friends, huh?” Harvey murmured. He had almost forgotten that day, himself. He was too embarrassed to bring his ‘friend’ up again to his classmates, but it didn’t change the fact that Harv was still there. He always had been.

**“Yeah, we were. I don't know if we’re ready to be friends again. I’m a piece of shit, but I’m self-aware enough to know things haven’t been great between us. I just know that one of us will end up destroying the whole of us if we don’t learn to live with each other. I don’t know how we’ll get to that point considering we keep butting heads, but...I don’t wanna die, Harvey. There’s got to be another way.”**

With a sigh, Harvey returned the piece of paper to the scarred hand that gave it to him. “ _‘Things haven’t been great_ ’ is a hell of an understatement, Harv. I don’t know either, but we can try to make things work. Constantly fighting you is exhausting; If it’s reconciliation you want, we can work towards it. It will just take time.”

 **“It’s worth a shot. Things couldn’t get much worse than where we’ve been,”** Harv grumbled, rubbing at his neck. **“Listen, I won’t apologize for who I am, or for what I’ve accomplished since that damn day in the courtroom, and** **_certainly not_ ** **for being angry, but I am sorry for trying to push you away like you did to me. It was fucking stupid. Selfish. Bad for all of us.”**

Harvey nodded, not used to such civility from the individual he spent most of his time fighting. However, he knew now that there was so much more to Harv than what was on the surface, just as there was more to Harvey than he chose to present. Closing his eyes, Harvey wiped a tear away with one finger. “I’m sorry, too. For everything.”

 **“You’d better be,”** Harv muttered; he still held resentment for the years of repression, but he was finally willing to begin putting it aside. **“But I accept your apology, if it means we can move forward** **_together_ ** **. We don’t always have to agree, but you need to stop trying to destroy me. Understand?”**

“Understood,” Harvey replied warily. “I hope you know I’m still not one hundred percent comfortable with this. I don’t know where to start. I know Arkham is out of the question.”

 **“You** **_will not_ ** **be taking us back there.”**

“I know, I said it was out of the question. But if you can set a condition, so can I. We need to talk to a professional about this.”

 **“** ** _You_ ** **need to talk to a professional about this. I’m not saying shit to any shrink after what they did to us.”**

Harvey winced. He barely remembered his time in Arkham, clearly something else Harv had been shielding him from. “I...we can always try Harley? She’s been a lot more level headed since she broke ties with the Joker.”

**“Still a shrink. Don’t trust her.”**

“You don’t have to speak until you feel safe, okay?”

Harv’s expression softened, but only slightly. **“You better not be** **_lying_ ** **to me.”**

“Trust goes both ways, Harv.”

 **“I have every reason to not trust you,”** he growled. **“But it’s worth a shot. You stop trying to get rid of me, and I’ll sit in on your little therapy sessions. Maybe I’ll even say something, if you’re lucky. We have a deal?”**

In an uncharacteristically businesslike fashion, he extended his hand to Harvey, who took it in his and gave it a civil shake. The two locked eyes before releasing their grip.

“We have a deal.”


End file.
